چکیده انگلیسی

We combine data from the 2002 National Population Census and the distribution of the number of human rights violations and victims across 22 departments to examine how Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war affected human capital accumulation. The year of birth and the department of birth jointly determine an individual's exposure during school age to three different periods of the civil war, namely the initial period (1960–1978), the worst period (1979–1984), and the final period (1985–1996). We find a strong negative impact of the civil war on the education of the two most disadvantaged groups, namely rural Mayan males and females. Among rural Mayan males, those who were school age during the three periods of the civil war in departments where more human rights violations were committed completed 0.27, 0.71, and 1.09 years less of schooling respectively whereas rural Mayan females exposed to the three periods of the war completed 0.12, 0.47, and 1.17 years less of schooling respectively. Given an average of 4.66 and 3.83 years of schooling for males and females, these represent declines of 6, 15, and 23% for males and 3, 12, and 30% for females. Our results are robust to the inclusion of indicators for department of residence, year of birth, and controls for different trends in education and human development in war-affected and peaceful departments of Guatemala and suggest that the country's civil war may have deepened gender, regional, sectoral, and ethnic disparities in schooling.

مقدمه انگلیسی

The microeconomic impact of war on civilian populations can be substantial and persistent. Not only can people living in war zones suffer injuries and have their property destroyed, they may also be displaced from their homes, lose their means of survival, or be unable to attend school, all of which may result in a permanent decline in their productivity and earnings. Understanding which economic consequences of conflict are more profound or persistent is important for implementing post-conflict reconstruction effectively. Moreover, since war costs tend to be disproportionately borne by the poor and most vulnerable populations, conflict may intensify poverty and inequality (Quinn et al., 2007). Thus, evidence of the negative consequences of war can help identify those populations that reconstruction policy should target. This paper examines how Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war between 1960 and 1996 affected human capital accumulation of individuals exposed to it and which demographic groups were worst affected.
There is a large literature that examines the aggregate effects of armed conflict on investment, income, and growth.1 One set of studies finds that populations quickly recover back to pre-war trends. Cities that experienced heavy bombing during World War II were indistinguishable from those that were not bombed 20 to 25 years after the war in Japan (Davis and Weinstein, 2002) and in Germany (Brakman et al., 2004). After the Vietnam War, Miguel and Roland (2005) find that physical infrastructure, education, and poverty levels all converged across regions within 25 years.
The cross-country literature also finds rapid recovery of post-war economies (Organski and Kugler, 1977, Organski and Kugler, 1980 and Przeworski et al., 2000). Compared to currency crises, banking crises, and sudden shifts in executive power, Cerra and Saxena (2008) find that while civil wars cause the largest short-run fall in output (6% on average), output also rebounds quickly only in the case of civil war, recovering half of the fall within a decade. In countries affected by civil war, economic, social, and political development are also found to improve steadily after a war (Chen et al., 2008). Evidence on the short-run effects of war and violence also exists. Abadie and Gardeazabal, (2003) find that terrorist violence in the Basque region of Spain significantly reduced economic growth relative to its neighboring regions. Justino and Verwimp (2006) find that 20% of the Rwandan population moved into poverty after the genocide. In a study of African countries affected by internal armed conflicts, Stewart et al. (2001) find that primary school enrollments decreased in only three out of eighteen countries, but improved in five during civil conflicts and that on average, girls fared better than boys since boys often serve in the army.
The recent availability of data from war regions has resulted in a growing empirical literature that estimates the microeconomic effects of war on income, poverty, wealth, health, and education, for both combatants and civilians. The long-term health effects of war appear to be significant. Alderman et al. (2004) find that young children who suffered from war-related malnutrition in Zimbabwe are significantly shorter as adults and that this may affect their lifetime labor productivity. Akresh et al. (2007) find a negative relationship between height-for-age z-scores and exposure to the Rwandan civil war, the effect being particularly strong for girls. In a similar paper, Akresh et al. (2009) find that an additional month of war exposure in rural Burundi decreases children's height-for-age z-scores compared to non-exposed children.
There is a growing body of research that estimates the impact of war on schooling and labor market outcomes. Examining the effect of Uganda's civil conflict on combatants, Blattman and Annan (2007) find that male youth who were recruited into armed groups received less schooling, are less likely to have a skilled job, and also earn lower wages. de Walque (2006) finds that individuals with an urban, educated background are more likely to have died during the Cambodian genocide period of 1975–1978 and as a result, males of school age during that period have less education than previous or subsequent cohorts. Akresh and de Walque (2008) find a strong negative impact of the Rwandan genocide on schooling, with children exposed to the civil war experiencing an 18.3% decline in their average years of education. The authors find a stronger negative effect for males and for the non-poor. For Central Asia, Shemyakina (2006) finds that adolescent Tajik girls whose homes were destroyed during the civil war are less likely to obtain secondary education and that this affects their wages. Unlike Stewart et al., 2001, de Walque, 2006, Akresh and de Walque, 2008 and Shemyakina, 2006 finds that the civil war in Tajikistan only decreased school enrollments of 12–16 year old girls living in high conflict intensity areas but had no significant impact on the education of boys or younger children.
In this paper, we examine the impact of Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war (1960–1996) on children's human capital accumulation. Even though the civil war lasted 36 years, the worst period of the war began in 1979 and ended in 1984, during which over 90% of the total human rights violations were committed. According to the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) and Recovery of Historical Memory Project (REMHI), roughly 200,000 individuals lost their lives or disappeared, more than 500,000 people or 8.3% of the 1983 population were displaced, and many Mayan villages were completely destroyed as a result of the civil war (Perera and Chauche, 1995, Archdiocese of Guatemala, 1999 and Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999)2. Of the cases of human rights violations documented by the CEH, 83% of fully identified victims were Mayan and 17% were Ladino.3 The civil war in Guatemala began as a military rebellion that intensified during the 1970s. The period between 1960 and 1978 was relatively peaceful, until the worst period of the war began in 1979 and lasted until 1984. From 1985 onwards, the violence declined rapidly, until the war ended in 1996. Most human rights violations were committed by the state against the civilian population and left a large number of children orphaned and abandoned. Families and communities lost property and their means of survival. The increase in military spending diverted necessary investments of public resources away from health and education, resulting in the abandonment of social development.4 This accelerated the deterioration of health and educational conditions in those areas most severely affected by the confrontation. In addition, the destruction of physical assets, including private and community property, and the loss of infrastructure, such as bridges and electrical towers, also represented considerable losses and amounted to over 6% of the country's 1990 gross domestic product. These material losses frequently involved the total destruction of family capital, especially among Mayan families, and particularly in the west and north-west of Guatemala.
Given the length of the war, the economic consequences are estimated to be severe. Based on its investigation of the economic costs of the armed confrontation and taking only the 10-year period between 1980 and 1989, the CEH estimates that the total direct quantifiable costs were equivalent to zero production in Guatemala for almost 15 months, equal to 121% of the country's 1990 GDP. The majority of the costs resulted from the loss of production potential due to the death, disappearance, or forced displacement of individuals who had to abandon their daily activities or from recruitment into the Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil (PAC), the Army, or the guerrillas. The destruction of physical assets, including private and community property, and the loss of infrastructure also represented considerable losses. These material losses frequently involved the total destruction of family capital, especially among Mayan families, and particularly in the west and north-west of Guatemala.
We use the 2002 National Population Census and the distribution of the number of human rights violations and victims across departments to examine the magnitude of the war's effect on years of schooling and grade completion. Even though previous studies have examined the effect of civil war on schooling, this paper contributes to the literature in three important dimensions. First, Guatemala's civil war is unique in that it lasted 36 years and had three distinct periods with varying levels of war intensity. This allows us to examine the schooling outcomes of three cohorts who may have been differentially affected by the war, as illustrated in Table 1. The first cohort was school age during the initial, relatively peaceful period (1960–1978), the second cohort was school age during the worst period of the war (1979–1984), and the third cohort was school age during the latter part of the war (1985–1996), which again was relatively peaceful. We therefore expect a small impact of the war on the education of the first and third cohorts but a fairly large effect on the schooling of the second cohort. Our empirical strategy enables us to assess the long-term and incremental effects of internal conflict, which is not possible with most civil wars since they last a relatively short period of time.Second, we estimate the effect of the war on schooling outcomes for eight demographic groups based on gender, urban–rural residence, and ethnicity in order to identify those groups that were most affected by the war. This is particularly relevant since most civil wars target specific ethnic groups and as a result may affect various demographic groups differently. Moreover, since these eight groups generally represent varying levels of wealth, we can examine the effect of the war on more socio-economically privileged groups, namely urban non-Mayans, as well as on socially excluded and poorer groups, namely rural Mayans.5 Since the majority of human rights violations occurred against the Mayan population in rural areas, we expect that the civil war in Guatemala may have disproportionately affected the schooling of rural Mayan children.
Finally, we include an analysis of schooling outcomes for a cohort who was school age for each of grades 1 to 6 during post-war years, that is from 1997 onwards. Since the war ended in December 1996 and our data comes from the 2002 Census, we observe individuals who were old enough to have had the opportunity to complete grades 1 to 6 after the war ended. By comparing grade completion of these post-war cohorts to those who were primary school age during the latter period of the war, we examine the speed of post-war recovery in terms of education.
We find a strong negative impact of the civil war on the education of rural Mayan males and females, which supports the conclusion that internal armed conflict reinforces poverty and social exclusion among the most vulnerable groups. Among rural Mayan males, those who were school age during the three periods of the civil war in departments where more human rights violations were committed completed 0.27, 0.71, and 1.09 years less of schooling respectively whereas rural Mayan females exposed to the three periods of the war completed 0.12, 0.47, and 1.17 years less of schooling respectively. Given an average of 4.66 and 3.83 years of schooling for males and females, these represent declines of 6, 15, and 23% for males and 3, 12, and 30% for females. Our results are robust to the inclusion of indicators for department of residence, year of birth, and controls for different trends in education and human development in war-affected and peaceful departments of Guatemala. Examining grade completion, we find that it was primarily due to a lower likelihood of completing primary school grades that rural Mayan males and females received less schooling as a result of the war. This result is not surprising since only 25% of the population in Guatemala receive more than a primary education. Finally, we find that rural Mayan males and females who were primary school age during post-war years in higher war intensity departments were more likely to complete each of grades 1 through 6 or higher, suggesting that at least primary school outcomes improved immediately after the war for the two groups most affected by it.
Our results show that Guatemala's civil war had a negative impact on the human capital accumulation of two of the most vulnerable demographic groups and may have lowered the adult wages and labor productivity of these individuals. That rural Mayan children who were school age during the final, relatively peaceful period of the war received less schooling than those who were school age during the most violent period is an interesting finding, for which we provide three possible explanations.
First, the war may have resulted in long-term poverty among rural Mayans and destruction of schools and other infrastructure in rural Mayan communities which lasted well after the majority of violence declined. Second, the sheer length of the war may have decreased parents' expectations of future returns to education for their children due to the uncertainty of when the war would end and reconstruction would begin. Third, children in our sample who were school age during the latter period of the war may include individuals whose parents were displaced from their homes. If these displaced families remained in or moved to higher war intensity departments and if their children were born after they were displaced, then the education of these children may have been most severely affected by the war. Since the majority of displacements occurred among rural Mayans during the worst period of the war (1979–1984), children in our sample who were born in 1978–1983 and were school age in 1985–1996 may include a large number from displaced families. Given that the loss of property and means of livelihood was greatest for displaced families, it is likely that the poverty of these families was most severely affected by the war. Therefore, it is not surprising that educational outcomes are worst for rural Mayan children who were school age during the latter period of the war.
Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war appears to have intensified gender, regional, sectoral, and ethnic disparities in human capital accumulation. As Table 2 shows, among individuals born between 1920 and 1983, average schooling is 2.27 years higher in the 17 lowest war intensity departments compared to the top five high war intensity departments, 3.74 years higher in urban than in rural areas, and 3.15 years higher among non-Mayan than Mayan people. Gender differences also exist, with female education lagging behind male education throughout the entire country but especially in high war intensity departments and among Mayans. Despite the negative consequences of the war, however, primary school outcomes of the worst affected groups improved among cohorts who were school age during post-war years. While this finding is encouraging and may be due to post-war education policies, we cannot be certain that this improvement continued over time.This paper is structured as follows. Section 2 describes the historical context and impact of the civil war. Section 3 describes the data and empirical identification strategy. Section 4 presents the results and Section 5 concludes.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

In this paper, we investigate the impact of Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war (1960–1996) on educational outcomes of individuals. The empirical identification strategy uses a difference-in-differences approach by comparing the difference in the schooling of cohorts who were school age during the three periods of the war with those who had completed school age by 1960 in departments that experienced higher and lower war intensity. Besides including fixed effects for an individual's department of residence and year of birth, we also include interactions between year of birth indicators and the 1964 enrollment rate as well as interactions between year of birth indicators and the availability of water and electricity in a department in 1964. These interactions allow us to control for differences in pre-war levels of education and human development in higher and lower war intensity departments that may have influenced levels and trends in educational attainment in these departments even in the absence of the war.
We find a strong negative impact of the civil war on the education of rural Mayan males and females, which supports the conclusion that internal armed conflict reinforces poverty and social exclusion among the most vulnerable groups. Among rural Mayan males, those who were school age during the three periods of the civil war in departments where more human rights violations were committed completed 0.27, 0.71, and 1.09 years less of schooling respectively whereas rural Mayan females exposed to the three periods of the war completed 0.12, 0.47, and 1.17 years less of schooling respectively. Given an average of 4.66 and 3.83 years of schooling for males and females, these represent declines of 6, 15, and 23% for males and 3, 12, and 30% for females. Our results are robust to the inclusion of indicators for department of residence, year of birth, and controls for different trends in education and human development in war-affected and peaceful departments of Guatemala. Examining grade completion, we find that it was primarily due to a lower likelihood of completing primary school grades that rural Mayan males and females received less schooling as a result of the war. This result is not surprising since only 25% of the population in Guatemala receive more than a primary education. Finally, we find that rural Mayan males and females who were primary school age during post-war years in higher war intensity departments were more likely to complete each of grades 1 through 6 or higher, suggesting that at least primary school outcomes improved immediately after the war for the two groups most affected by it.
Understanding the mechanisms by which civil war affects human capital formation and accumulation is important in formulating effective post-war policies to protect individuals from the negative consequences of wars. While our analysis does indicate some likely mechanisms through which households responded to the civil war, our data does not allow us to address whether or not it was through orphanhood that school age children in higher war intensity departments received less education. As discussed in 2, civil war can result in the displacement of families and the loss of property and means of livelihood. It can cause the destruction of schools and infrastructure and delay the construction of new schools due to the loss of capital and human resources. It can also heighten security fears, especially for girls. Moreover, the destruction of existing industries and lack of development of new ones may reduce the expected returns to education for both boys and girls. All these factors may discourage investment in human capital during a civil war and result in low levels of human capital formation and accumulation among individuals exposed to war.
Our results indicate that exposure to Guatemala's civil war had a large, negative, and long-term effect on the education of rural Mayan males and females who were school age between 1960 and 1996. Moreover, each successive cohort exposed to the war during three distinct periods, of violence and conflict obtained less and less schooling. These results can be explained by a combination of factors. First, Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war increased poverty among one of the poorest groups in the country. Due to the loss of property, their means of livelihood and wealth, and the death of income-earning family members, rural Mayan households may have reallocated limited resources away from educating sons and especially daughters for whom expected returns to education are generally low and security fears are high. In addition, rural Mayan males may have been more likely to become combatants and therefore not attend school.
Second, the finding that cohorts who were school age after the bloodiest period of the war have worse schooling outcomes than those who were school age during the most violent period suggests that even though internal conflict subsided dramatically between 1985 and 1996, the poverty of affected households may have worsened and that this adversely affected educational outcomes. The end of the majority of violence in 1985 did not result in the reconstruction of schools and other infrastructure, most of which were destroyed during the second period of the war. Moreover, the sheer length of the war may have lowered parents' expectations of future returns to schooling for their children due to the lack of creation of skilled jobs. This finding may also be driven by the inclusion of children of displaced rural Mayan households in the cohort exposed to the latter period of the war. Since displaced households most likely experienced the greatest loss of property and income, their children may have fared particularly badly in terms of education.15
That the war had a negative impact on the education of males and females among the most disadvantaged group shows that it worsened the position of rural Mayans amongst the poorest groups by deteriorating their educational attainment. As Table 2 reveals, the war may have reinforced already existing gender, regional, sectoral, and ethnic differences in educational outcomes. Our post-war analysis indicates that at least primary school outcomes improved for rural Mayan males and females who were school age after the signing of the peace agreement in December 1996. While this result provides some evidence of post-war recovery, at least in terms of primary education, we cannot be certain that subsequent cohorts will experience similar improvements nor that existing educational disparities will be narrowed in the near future.